


worth waiting for

by tfa2141



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Devil baby tries to right his wrongs, F/M, canon divergence after 2x13, minor spoilers for that episode so go watch it if you haven't, the emotional fic I needed to write to get me through the hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 20:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9786341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfa2141/pseuds/tfa2141
Summary: “Did you ever actually care about me?”Out of all the things Chloe Decker expected to find on a rainy day in Los Angeles, her old partner was at the bottom of the list.Or, the one where Lucifer comes back to Los Angeles after his irresponsible bender in Vegas and realizes some things.





	

“Did you ever actually care about me?”

 

Out of all the things Chloe Decker expected to find on a rainy day in Los Angeles, her old partner was at the bottom of the list. But here he was, standing a careful distance away as the sadness and anger she’d harbored for a little over a month came pouring out. His face fell along with his eyes, now studying the puddles that formed on the uneven asphalt of the street instead of meeting her gaze – the kind blue he loved now a curse as they nearly seemed to see right through him.

It hadn’t truly been a spur of the moment decision, as had so many other things in his life – it in fact took several hours for him to make up his mind about leaving – but either way he closed the doors to his home and his heart and went to drown his woes in vices and alcohol alike in Sin City. While he was there, he had found the best way to stick it to dear old Dad by diverging from the path that he had been led down in the best way he knew how – the evidence of his choice presented in the form of a plain gold band around his left ring finger. He didn’t really care about her, that he knew – and so did his heart that ached painfully and deeply every night when he felt the ghost of his detective in his arms. He supposed that it didn’t truly matter, because she couldn’t possibly care about him either – although even now he could not explain why the miles he had traveled had called him back to Los Angeles.

Maybe the world wanted to laugh at the Devil’s misery one last time. Maybe it was his own personal form of punishment, a twisted deliverance of justice as retribution for his sins.

Either way, he stood in the street in front of Chloe’s apartment, glancing up at the detective from where she stood under the overhang of the porch, shielded from the rain.

 

He spun the wedding band anxiously as the silence stretched on between them.

She went quiet for a few moments, expecting his answer, and when he did not reply she fought against the burning in the back of her throat to soften her voice. She was thankful for the rain at this moment – though she could feel the water that splashed up onto the porch deck creeping along the toes of her shoes, the few drops that leaked through the slats in the overhang above her head would hopefully obscure any tears that might betray her confidence by falling down her face.

“I tried so hard to keep myself from feeling anything after Dan and I split,” she offered. “I figured it was just better to put these walls up and I believed that it would be okay for me to just have Trixie, you know? I didn’t like being a single parent, sure, but it stopped me from getting hurt.”

At this, Lucifer chanced to look away from the reflective pools of water at his feet and searched the detective’s eyes for any emotion that could overpower the fire climbing up from under his heart. And for a single, flickering moment, he swore that he saw the flames reflected in her eyes as well. But as soon as it was there, the moment vanished, leaving behind only the beautiful hurt of his detective’s face. As he straightened upwards, raking a hand through his damp curls, she crossed her arms over her chest defensively, sending another fierce tug through his heart.

"And then you came into my life and somehow I found myself falling for you, despite my best efforts at putting up those walls. You saw right through me, but most importantly I knew you had my back. Some part of me thought that I might be different, that you didn't look at those other girls the way you did with me, or show the side of you that actually seemed to care. I was really willing to give this a shot, and then you ran."

“I never meant to hurt you, Detective.”

Her lips quirked upwards at the corners, more a scoff than a smile as she shook him off. She gestured at his ring finger.

“Don’t you see I can’t believe that? You ran away and then you got married, Lucifer - without even thinking twice about how much you hurt me by leaving after all we'd been through and how much we both sacrificed to even give this a chance to work. Far be it for me to assume that I was any different from those other girls you slept with - and you even went ahead and pledged your entire life to one of those girls, who you probably knew for all of a few hours before the wedding. But what hurts the most is that you asked me if what we had was real, and then you took everything you had and all of my heart that I gave you and left without a trace.”

“I thought it would be easier if I left,” he began, his words soft but weighted down by the pain her statement had brought about. “I have caused you so much pain that you don’t deserve, and it breaks my heart to see you deal with the effects of my… _misguided_ efforts.”

 _Least of all the fact that none of this was real,_ he thought.

He placed particular emphasis on the second-to-last word, hoping that it would convey the truth of what he meant to say but could not find the language to express.

“I still mean what I said to you that day on the beach. You deserve better than what I can give you, and I hoped that I could hold myself to that promise as well as you could move on from me.”

The detective bit her lip and took a tentative step towards him, finally beginning to understand what had driven him away.

“You don’t believe that I cared about you, do you?”

 

She thought she saw a flash of fear in his eyes as she searched them for some kind of indication that she was right – but the sharp staccato of her heart in her chest perhaps gave her the answer she didn’t know she had.

_Well, it’s somewhat difficult to explain that you were put in my path by God, the almighty mover of pawns, as some sort of – gift for my subservience all these years, or just maybe to return the Devil himself to Hell?_

He sighed and made a half-turn in exasperation, again running his hands through his hair as if the path of his fingers could coax an answer out of the vice his emotions were in and bring it forward to rational thought.

“No, I don’t believe that!” he snapped. “How could I possibly? No one has ever wanted me for anything more than what I could offer them, and I should have bloody known better than to think that there would be someone like you who was just so infuriatingly _good_ that they could change that. I went out and married someone just to prove that I could, that love was empty and pointless and cruel. And I knew that I could simply throw the whole thing away when I got done with it – but here’s the thing. All it made me do was realize that no one could fill the hole that you made in my heart. I missed you every single day that I was gone, but I would rather suffer the pain of never seeing you again than face the truth somewhere down the line that none of this was your choice.”

The strength he had left crumbled under the words he had yet to say, and they were both surprised when the Devil’s eyes began to fill with tears.

“It hurt you when I left, Chloe. But it broke me completely, because I… I fell in love with you. I never stopped loving you.”

When he turned his eyes skyward once more to face the detective, she had stepped closer to the edge of the porch where he stood – so much so that she could swear that if she listened, she could hear his heart hammering inside his chest. As he searched her face for some kind of understanding, he found tears in her crystal blue eyes – whether from hurt or anger he wasn’t sure – but at this moment the gravity of the situation pulled too heavily on the weight he carried on his shoulders and sent it crashing down around him with a revelation.

And with his heart laid bare at her feet, he allowed himself for a moment to believe that perhaps the very thing he had once been cast out of Heaven for was still at work – that fragile concept of free will.

Maybe his Father had put her in his path, he acknowledged. But He couldn’t have made him fall for her any more than the other way around. Maybe his heart hadn’t been trying to betray him when it drug him back to the City of Angels.

Maybe it was trying to save him before it was too late.

 

At this, he removed the gold band from his finger and with a shake of his head turned and heaved it as far towards the cloudy skies as he could. Turning back to his detective, he felt the aching in his heart replaced instead by something that could pass as hope.

“You asked me if I cared for you, Detective. And now that you know my answer, I suppose I could ask you for yours.”

A ghost of a smile painted Chloe’s face as she brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face and stepped off the porch into the downpour, reaching her hand out to run her thumb over the indentation where his wedding band had been seated before linking their fingers together.

“I know that I did,” she offered, her voice barely more than a whisper. “But right now, I just need some time to think this through, okay?”

She wrapped her arms around him, allowing herself to hear the beat of his heart under her ears, just as fast and unsteady as hers. With a sigh, he allowed his arms to encircle her, the emptiness in his chest filling slowly with every breath he took while holding her there. While they both knew that their struggles were far from over, the darkness on his horizon retreated ever so slightly in her presence - and that he wouldn't trade for the world.

“Promise me you’ll be here when I make up my mind?”

It wasn’t a question as much as a command, and every part of him felt the answer in resounding unison.

 

“You’re worth waiting for.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed it feel free to leave a comment or just toss a like in there somewhere, your positive responses are what keeps me going (when I have the time)!


End file.
